Most helpful positive review

I liked BF4 when I started it, it seemed like a good and polished game. Naturally I just hopped into multiplayer, played a few matches and everything went pretty well. Later right after I shot down a helicopter with a stinger, my game just froze. I thought it was just my x-box, so I turned the game back on and played a few matches and it did it again. Now I was infuriated! I scanned reviews on amazon, and sure enough, other people where having this problem.

Most helpful critical review

3Tons of fun with friends... when it works... when it isn't freezing... when I'm not fighting the interface...

ByT. Slavenson November 2, 2013

EDIT 2 12/12/2013: A number of people have commented below and I feel the need to add their sentiments to the body of this review.

We're on update #3 for the 360 and other various platforms. I have a friends group comprised of 360, XB1, PS4, and PC players that all experience issues with this game.

The crashing continues, with little rhyme or reason. Our group used to experience the 360 hard-lock issue on Hainan Resort without fail, and that privilege is now bestowed on us by Dawnbreaker.

Our solution: Quit the game before the next map in the rotation loads. This is hardly what I'd call an ideal solution, and it's hardly limited to Dawnbreaker. Dawnbreaker just happens to be the map that will do it 9/10 times. The main issue this brings about is that then you have to regroup your party on another server, wait 1-5 rounds for the server to magically autobalance you with your party, or manually switch teams.

Putting it bluntly: This process sucks.

After looking through the live issue tracker on Battlelog, [..] I'm confident in saying that this game was released in this state on purpose, and that they knew it was going to be a S***storm of issues. We are somewhere past Alpha, but not anywhere near out of the Beta phase. We are actively Beta testing this product. I've currently paid $110 for the privilege of being inconvenienced by this game.

Thoughts:Look through the Battlelog post linked above. If you read between the lines you can see that the Netcode is hopelessly screwed, and the apparent stress of launching across 5 platforms was more than the company was capable of. They are in full blown damage control at this point. During Double XP week, my console locked up so much that I probably missed out on half of the XP was supposed to be earning double on, and as a result, stopped caring and stopped turning it on.

This is literally the most broken Triple A title that I've ever played. For EA and DICE to be anything but utterly transparent about this situation is going to result in ill will that will turn people off from playing the next iteration. I sold my copy of Battlefield 3 when it was still worth 40 bucks as a trade in, I like this game, even in it's broken state, more than I ever did that game, but I won't make the mistake of buying the next title or it's Premium counterpart as a first run product.

Never again.

___________________________________

Edit: (THIS DIDN'T FIX SQUAT)There is a patch coming out soon for Consoles that may address the freezing issues. The fun factor of this game when playing with friends rates this a 5/5 in my book, but the technical issues are such a turn-off that I literally turn off my Xbox the first time it locks up and don't bother going back.

If they can fix that, it take this game from merely "Good" to GREAT!

Original Review:

***The Good stuff***

The sound engine is INCREDIBLE!

When this game works, and you aren't fighting against the design to actually get in a match a play it with friends, it's a blast. They've stepped back some of the design changes that were brought about in Battlefield 3, and changed the all-around feel of it, to more Bad Company 2, than Battlefield 3. Battlefield 3 was an obvious attempt to capitalize on smaller battles and get in on the Call of Duty money train.

There are still flashlights that can blind in dark corridors, red-dot lasers that act as a "SHOOT HERE" target beacon, and some weirdness on the sniping front that could use some tweaking.

When the game is working the way it should, it's a 5/5.

Thanks for making 5-man fire teams a thing, and thanks for bringing back Commander

***The meat of the Crap Sandwich***

There are lots and lots of problems. Capital 'L' LOTS. These issues are anecdotal (NOT ANYMORE - see above), and vary be user experience but there is an EA support page that has vetted issues across multiple scenarios,and every one of my friends are having issues in some fashion across PS4, XB1, PC and 360.

Playing last night (11/15/13) we were all booted from various servers at various points of time (loading in, playing, checking the score, changing maps)

This game is obviously half-cooked on current gen consoles, and according to the support thread PC players are not exempt. There have been server patches but no client patch on 360/PS3 yet. (THERE WAS, IT SHUFFLED ISSUES AND RESOLVED NADA)

***The dirty truth***

-Random Freezing: During map cycles, during "Levelution" events, during server join, during round changes, during, "just standing there". This is absolutely freaking unacceptable in a retail release. This is some entry level QA stuff right here. They knew about this and let it release anyway. Shame on them.

-No party feature: I have to get a little teenager-y here but, Seriously! WHAT THE HELL? Dice has always missed the mark on this in their BF games on console, but this is just too much. In 2013, when every top tier release since 2006 has had a party system that isn't bass-ackwards, I simply can't understand the thinking behind this.

They also pulled Platoons from Battlelog, with the statement that they'll be back in 2014. DOUBLE WHAT THE HELL

-Graphical step back: If you need proof to see that the 360/PS3 are at the end of their run for pushing the graphical envelope in newer games, look no further. Halo 4, this ain't. When you've played every map a handful of times, you'll stop noticing or caring. There's stuff to blow up.

-No pre-game customization: I hate Battlelog, you shouldn't be forcing me to use my computer or tablet to organize stuff when I'm playing the damn game. During battle is not the time to force people to mess with their loadouts. This is, frankly, just stupid.

-Loadout Screen: The loadout screen is garbage. Pure garbage. I'm not unintelligent, I can navigate it, I can make it work. Somebody is in love with their UI design, and somebody has forgotten that you design this stuff for the players benefit, not your ego.

-LET ME EDIT MY CLASSES BETWEEN ROUNDS. Christ almighty how is this a hard concept?

-The UI: The UI sucks. It's a mess of menus and menus and more menus. Open up a menu? LOOK MORE MENUS! Say the work menu enough and you'll start to question your sanity.

-Battlelog: Seriously- EA, DICE? NOBODY LIKES BATTLELOG. If you like Battlelog, great. I hate you. For realsies, guise, I'm super-cereal, I won't play this game on the PC where it arguably is superior on all fronts because of how bad Battlelog is. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND BACKING A FAILED HORSE LIKE THIS. Quit floggin this dead animal.

- The Battlelog App sucks, reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bad. I've queried all my friends, and so far between the Ipad 3, Nexus 7, 7.2, an overclocked HP Touchpad, and some random Samsung thingy, the Battlelog app is Crap. It's a cr(app)

Miscellaneous:

I am constantly baffled by the design decisions they've made starting with BF3.

EDIT 2 12/12/2013: A number of people have commented below and I feel the need to add their sentiments to the body of this review.

We're on update #3 for the 360 and other various platforms. I have a friends group comprised of 360, XB1, PS4, and PC players that all experience issues with this game.

The crashing continues, with little rhyme or reason. Our group used to experience the 360 hard-lock issue on Hainan Resort without fail, and that privilege is now bestowed on us by Dawnbreaker.

Our solution: Quit the game before the next map in the rotation loads. This is hardly what I'd call an ideal solution, and it's hardly limited to Dawnbreaker. Dawnbreaker just happens to be the map that will do it 9/10 times. The main issue this brings about is that then you have to regroup your party on another server, wait 1-5 rounds for the server to magically autobalance you with your party, or manually switch teams.

Putting it bluntly: This process sucks.

After looking through the live issue tracker on Battlelog, [..] I'm confident in saying that this game was released in this state on purpose, and that they knew it was going to be a S***storm of issues. We are somewhere past Alpha, but not anywhere near out of the Beta phase. We are actively Beta testing this product. I've currently paid $110 for the privilege of being inconvenienced by this game.

Thoughts:Look through the Battlelog post linked above. If you read between the lines you can see that the Netcode is hopelessly screwed, and the apparent stress of launching across 5 platforms was more than the company was capable of. They are in full blown damage control at this point. During Double XP week, my console locked up so much that I probably missed out on half of the XP was supposed to be earning double on, and as a result, stopped caring and stopped turning it on.

This is literally the most broken Triple A title that I've ever played. For EA and DICE to be anything but utterly transparent about this situation is going to result in ill will that will turn people off from playing the next iteration. I sold my copy of Battlefield 3 when it was still worth 40 bucks as a trade in, I like this game, even in it's broken state, more than I ever did that game, but I won't make the mistake of buying the next title or it's Premium counterpart as a first run product.

Never again.

___________________________________

Edit: (THIS DIDN'T FIX SQUAT)There is a patch coming out soon for Consoles that may address the freezing issues. The fun factor of this game when playing with friends rates this a 5/5 in my book, but the technical issues are such a turn-off that I literally turn off my Xbox the first time it locks up and don't bother going back.

If they can fix that, it take this game from merely "Good" to GREAT!

Original Review:

***The Good stuff***

The sound engine is INCREDIBLE!

When this game works, and you aren't fighting against the design to actually get in a match a play it with friends, it's a blast. They've stepped back some of the design changes that were brought about in Battlefield 3, and changed the all-around feel of it, to more Bad Company 2, than Battlefield 3. Battlefield 3 was an obvious attempt to capitalize on smaller battles and get in on the Call of Duty money train.

There are still flashlights that can blind in dark corridors, red-dot lasers that act as a "SHOOT HERE" target beacon, and some weirdness on the sniping front that could use some tweaking.

When the game is working the way it should, it's a 5/5.

Thanks for making 5-man fire teams a thing, and thanks for bringing back Commander

***The meat of the Crap Sandwich***

There are lots and lots of problems. Capital 'L' LOTS. These issues are anecdotal (NOT ANYMORE - see above), and vary be user experience but there is an EA support page that has vetted issues across multiple scenarios,and every one of my friends are having issues in some fashion across PS4, XB1, PC and 360.

Playing last night (11/15/13) we were all booted from various servers at various points of time (loading in, playing, checking the score, changing maps)

This game is obviously half-cooked on current gen consoles, and according to the support thread PC players are not exempt. There have been server patches but no client patch on 360/PS3 yet. (THERE WAS, IT SHUFFLED ISSUES AND RESOLVED NADA)

***The dirty truth***

-Random Freezing: During map cycles, during "Levelution" events, during server join, during round changes, during, "just standing there". This is absolutely freaking unacceptable in a retail release. This is some entry level QA stuff right here. They knew about this and let it release anyway. Shame on them.

-No party feature: I have to get a little teenager-y here but, Seriously! WHAT THE HELL? Dice has always missed the mark on this in their BF games on console, but this is just too much. In 2013, when every top tier release since 2006 has had a party system that isn't bass-ackwards, I simply can't understand the thinking behind this.

They also pulled Platoons from Battlelog, with the statement that they'll be back in 2014. DOUBLE WHAT THE HELL

-Graphical step back: If you need proof to see that the 360/PS3 are at the end of their run for pushing the graphical envelope in newer games, look no further. Halo 4, this ain't. When you've played every map a handful of times, you'll stop noticing or caring. There's stuff to blow up.

-No pre-game customization: I hate Battlelog, you shouldn't be forcing me to use my computer or tablet to organize stuff when I'm playing the damn game. During battle is not the time to force people to mess with their loadouts. This is, frankly, just stupid.

-Loadout Screen: The loadout screen is garbage. Pure garbage. I'm not unintelligent, I can navigate it, I can make it work. Somebody is in love with their UI design, and somebody has forgotten that you design this stuff for the players benefit, not your ego.

-LET ME EDIT MY CLASSES BETWEEN ROUNDS. Christ almighty how is this a hard concept?

-The UI: The UI sucks. It's a mess of menus and menus and more menus. Open up a menu? LOOK MORE MENUS! Say the work menu enough and you'll start to question your sanity.

-Battlelog: Seriously- EA, DICE? NOBODY LIKES BATTLELOG. If you like Battlelog, great. I hate you. For realsies, guise, I'm super-cereal, I won't play this game on the PC where it arguably is superior on all fronts because of how bad Battlelog is. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND BACKING A FAILED HORSE LIKE THIS. Quit floggin this dead animal.

- The Battlelog App sucks, reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bad. I've queried all my friends, and so far between the Ipad 3, Nexus 7, 7.2, an overclocked HP Touchpad, and some random Samsung thingy, the Battlelog app is Crap. It's a cr(app)

Miscellaneous:

I am constantly baffled by the design decisions they've made starting with BF3.

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I don't know how they managed to make the game both play worse and look worse than BF3 but they did. The textures have trouble loading, the framerate drops and stutters like I am running this on an old PC. I thought that was one of the things that I wasnt going to have to deal with when I got a console because the game was optimized for it but whatever.

The campaign is buggy and terrible which is unfortunate because Omar from the wire is the VA for one of the main dudes(and that char is one of the worst NPC's in recent memory).

The multiplayer is way worse than BF3. Textures load slowly, framerate drops when things start to happen, freezing, rubberbanding, and yeah just not fun. I loved BF2, 3, BC, BC2 and 1942. This game sucks compared to them.

I set aside 2 whole days for nothing but BF4 and here I am halfway into day one and instead of playing it I am writing a bad review and seeing what my friends are doing.

I hate to be the tinfoil hat kind of person but it feels like this game was designed to run on the new consoles and then it was forced to run on the old(360/ps3) consoles after some hamfisted adjustments to textures and stuff. It just feels so poorly optimized. I dont know. What I do know is I regret this purchase.

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I started playing Battlefield with Bad Company 2. I loved it and pre-ordered BF3. I've enjoyed BF3 so much that I also preordered BF4. This is where my preordering days will come to a stop. I was expecting a gaming experience at least on par with BF3, but sadly this is a huge step down.

I only play multiplayer so my review will be based solely on that. On release day I expect server problems, and to a degree I can deal with those, I know they will get better in a few days. The problem is not with the servers, it is with the game as a whole. Half-baked would be putting it kindly. First there is the freezing. In the two hours I played last night my console froze four times, I had to reboot. Second there is no pre-game squad system. Want to play a match with friends? Too bad. You have to try to find a server that is empty enough so friends can try to join on you before the server fills up. Third, good luck finding a server. The server browser is a joke. I filter so it isn't supposed to show me full servers, but it does anyway and I have to scroll through hundreds of them to find an open server. That is once you actually get the list, it can take minutes just for it to load. So just do a quick match, right? Wrong, I got nothing but network errors when trying this.

So what about the gameplay, that has to be much better you say. Wrong again. The graphics are really poor. I know there is a new generation of consoles coming out and it SHOULD be much better on those, but those aren't out yet and you're charging full price for the current gen. The graphics should be at least on par with BF3. Enemies are very hard to see, everything seems to be washed out, textures are non-existent, there are no hit markers, the weapon customization is overly complicated and the list goes on.

So Dice and EA I'll throw you a bone and give this one star. But only because Amazon doesn't let me give you zero. I know a few of these items can be fixed with patches, but I paid full price for a complete product on day one. If companies are going to continue to go the route of shipping out incomplete software and fixing it later they should charge less day one and ramp up the cost as the game improves. You're giving users no incentive to pre order.

**Update 11/11/2013**Returning the game. I played for about an hour tonight and it froze my console four times. I guess that is what the four in Battlefield four stands for. I give up. I want to love it, but it just hates me too much.

Got this game when it came out and it constantly crashes and all the progress you have made from your last save is lost, even on the multilplayer the game crashes and you have to restart your Xbox and then you have to manually look for a server, because the quick start option doesn't work so it takes a good 10 min to start up again after a crash.

Some people will say this happens on new games but no it doesn't Dice just pushed out a unfinished product to beat the new CoD out of the gate and this game is just as glitchly as the beta so just wait for the price drop in a couple of months after the game is finished....

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Battlefield 3 was amazing, the second best shooter of this generation behind CoD4. However Bf4 is a buggy disaster, and isn't worth playing even if you were given a copy for free. I'm not going to go into the dozens of gamebreaking problems, just scroll down and look at other reviews. I made the mistake of buying this because of Bf3, and my grievous error was buying the season pass for a game so broken they've interrupted all DLC plans while attempting to fix the base game. This has to be the first game franchise I've ever seen where from one version to the next they went from a 10 to a 1. Great job EA & DICE, you've lost someone who would have been a Bf customer for life.

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I have been playing Battlefield and COD games since they were released. I love playing both of them and think they both have their merits and drawbacks. That said, this is the worst game to date. The multiplayer is the WORST of all of them, just god awful. I've installed the game to the hard drive and there is still MAJOR lag and it just looks crappy, let alone the gameplay. I saw how this game had bad reviews on amazon and I still bought it thinking maybe they were just being cry-babies. Instead I was wrong and have paid the literal price. Maybe this game was designed for the Xbox One and they tried to push is on the 360 platform and thats why is sucks so bad but I never in my life have played a game this trashy.

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I've always been a FPS fan. I've played all the COD's, BF, Halo's etc. I really liked BF3, with a few minor complaints, but overall a favorite so I was excited for this to come out. A lot of reviewers talking about the washed out colors and lack of texture and they are completely right. Even on a gaming monitor through HDMI and on all graphics settings I feel like I'm playing a XBOX (original) game. The online matching system is a joke. The weapon customization is frustrating and hard to figure out at first. I'm halfway through the campaign and it's just ok. Usually BF games have an awesome story-line while other FPS games I buy for multiplayer, but I'm debating just stopping now. It's a bit boring.For how much I was excited for this game, I'm really disappointing. I hope I don't get let down by COD ghosts as well.

Edit: A lot of the problems I had have since been fixed. Still not 100% happy with it, but it's enjoyable to play now. Still think the game engine is a bit lacking as the physics are not quite realistic. The campaign, which I still haven't finished -almost done, gets better. Matchmaking is a lot less buggy. I still haven't gotten into the game like I have with other BF games, but I felt I needed to remove the 1 star rating.

EA has demonstrated yet again their regard for their customers. This title (just like last year) hardly works on release. I'm 32 years old and am too proud to continue supporting a company that lies to me year after year just to get sales. I'm done with EA. They have ZERO excuse on this one. It's the same console, the same online system, and the game is almost completely the same. What excuse do they have for core features to not work?

In fact, as a customer of 10 years, I'm going to demand that Amazon refund my money on this. Maybe that will get some attention from EA.

Bugs: Impossible to play with your friends. There's not even a menu option to join as party. Joining "on top" of eachother, one at a time, results in the "command slot not available" bug. Often impossible to join a game single player Server browsing seems completely broken. No matter what filters you choose there are no results No sound in helicopter (same bug in BF3)

And that's just the beginning: The graphics are worse than BF3, the gameplay is stilted, and the glaringly obvious fault that nobody wants to say:

1. DICE just wanted to cash in on people wanting an Xbox One launch title before the One was released. They got $100 from me. Too bad I hadn't just donated it to Wounded Warriors Project. Maybe I just need to grow up and stop gaming entirely.

2. This will affect my decision to buy an Xbox One. If the BF4 online experience is this bad, what value does Xbox Live have for me? Just another bill, like this game.

It's cruel for me to give a one star rating, it really is, considering the massive amount of development and potential this game has. But I'm not buying potential, and like any game critic will tell you: NEVER SHIP INCOMPLETE GAMES!!!

This game is such a chore to try to play, and impossible to play online with anyone on your friends list, that I'd rather just go to the office and catch up on work. Seriously.

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Let me preface this review with the fact that I only play the single player (campaign) part of the game. I have no opinion on how the multiplayer performed.

This game is way to short, probably less than five hours total if you don't count all the times I was killed. The graphics are so-so and a bit hard for me to see what was going on. The enemies were very difficult to see and sometimes seemed to come out of nowhere, even places I had already cleared. The story is hard follow and really makes little sense. The actions of the AI squad are sporadic and they sometimes get stuck in certain places. There is a large variety of weapons, most of which you have to unlock by scoring points during the level or picking them up from dead enemies. I could not figure out how to use the weapon upgrade system. I played this game on the "Normal" level and it was still quite difficult. I did see several bugs throughout the game but I never experienced any lock ups. The first time I played I had to download some upgrades and install a 2 GB portion of the game to the hard drive. Not a big deal, really, but annoying for a high profile game like this. One would think all the bugs would have been worked out before release. I agree with other viewers that this game was released before it was ready. On the plus side the audio was great.

On a personal note I find the trend of these games to emphasize the multiplayer and pretty much provide a token attempt at a single player campaign is very discouraging. If they want to release a multiplayer only game then just say so and we single players will buy something else. No problem.